This is the first of a three-part series on exploring the British Isles, travelling to six countries over 15 days, with Viking Cruises. Today, leaving Viking’s home port in Bergen, Norway, for the Scottish Highlands.
You know a cruise is popular when it has a private Facebook group, with thousands of members sharing stories and asking questions about Viking’s British Isles cruise.
My daughter and I took the cruise last month and were able to make the most of our time by learning from past cruisers online. After all, there’s a lot of ground to be covered in the British Isles — Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England — and plenty of choices to make on what to do on shore, so getting an insider’s view proved helpful.
The 15-day British Isles Explorer cruise actually covers six countries. Besides the United Kingdom and Ireland, the cruise includes Viking’s home port of Bergen, Norway, which is either where the cruise begins or ends, depending on the time of travel.
For our cruise, Bergen was our embarkation point and London the end. In total, there would be 12 ports of call and one full day at sea.
Visiting Bergen, one of Europe’s oldest port cities, was a bonus, but the majority of time is in the British Isles, beginning with the Shetland Islands. The four other Scotland stops were Invergordon, Edinburgh, Orkney Islands and Ullapool in the Highlands. Next on the itinerary was cruising the Irish Sea to Belfast, Northern Ireland, Holyhead in Wales and Dublin, Ireland, while our last leg of the journey was England, with stops in Liverpool and Dover before reaching our final destination of Greenwich, in south-east London.
I’ve been on four other Viking cruises in the past, all European voyages, and what I loved most was the included excursions at every port of call. Guests can also pay extra for special shore excursions, which we did on four occasions. These were in Northern Ireland to see the Giant’s Causeway, the Scottish Highlands to see ancient stones carved by an extinct people called the Picts, Leeds Castle in Kent and Powerscourt, a private estate near Dublin.
We sailed on the beautiful Viking Saturn, which has a capacity of 930 passengers but feels like fewer thanks to its spacious, open design. And with a full day in Bergen before our departure, there was time to take one of Viking’s included excursions, that began with a bus tour of the city with a local guide, who ended his time with us by walking through the quaint quay of Bryggen wharf and explaining its significance.
The area, with its colourful wooden buildings and old warehouses, began as a major European centre of trade in the 12th century and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Afterwards, on our own, we took a funicular from Bergen’s downtown to the top of Mount Floyen for a panoramic view of the city, did the Troll Forest walk and stopped in a cafe to enjoy a classic Norwegian cinnamon bun, called Bergen’s Skillingsboller.
After leaving Bergen, we cruised 194 nautical miles across the North Sea to our first British Isles’ port of call in the Shetland Islands, the northern-most tip of Scotland. While everyone’s Viking journey differs, depending on what excursions they opt to take, ours was a mix of both city life and country life. Here are some of our Scotland highlights:
Shetland Islands
We docked in Lerwick, Shetland Islands’ main town, where you can walk through its paved flagstone streets under streamers dangling from lovely buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries. The buildings in the small village are mostly occupied by shops, many of them selling Scottish woolen goods and other locally made fare. While the shops were tempting, we continued walking past them along Lerwick’s shoreline, stopping at a place that would be familiar to anyone who has watched the TV crime drama Shetland, which is filmed here. The Lodberrie, with fish boats out front, is home of fictional character Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez.
We also did Viking’s included, two-hour excursion, which brought us by bus through the countryside, passing points of interest like the ruined walls of Scalloway Castle, built in 1599, and both sides of the islands — the North Sea side and the Atlantic (no place in Shetland is further than six km from the sea). But our favourite part of the tour was not a place but a person, Carol Fullerton, who introduced us to eight of her 38 Shetland ponies.
Following in the footsteps of her father and grandfather, the 67-year-old breeds native Shetland ponies, that measure between 87 and 107 centimetres in height.
“They’ve always been a part of my life. When I was young, the ponies weren’t for fun. They were work horses. All the crop work was done with ponies. There were no tractors,” she said.
Fullerton said the compact, hardy horse is believed to have been on the Shetland Islands since the Bronze Age, possibly longer, and once numbered 10,000. Now, their numbers have dwindled to about 1,000 here.
Shetland ponies are able to carry double their weight so, after an 1847 law banned children from working in mining pits, ponies were sent down instead. Fullerton said “the ponies were treated much better than the men.”
“You must be good to them.”
It was obvious from the interactions I saw between Fullerton and her ponies, they are living the good life in wind-swept pastures of Scotland. A gust of wind brought us to our last Shetland pony fact provided by Fullerton, which related to how they were standing in the field.
“I always say they’re like the weather clock. Whichever way the wind is blowing you’ll always see them standing with their rear ends to the wind.”
The Highlands
After docking in Invergordon, on the doorstop of the Highlands, we bussed to the first of our four special shore excursions to learn about the extinct Pict people. Driving away from the regular tourist routes in The Highlands, we arrived above a small fishing village in the Tarbot Peninsula. It’s here we saw the ancient Shandwick Stone, carved by the Picts, who lived in the Scottish Highlands in the 8th century for about 600 years. The stone, still in its original location overlooking the sea, is protected in a glass box.
It’s special to see this intricately carved, three-metre high stone, here instead of in a museum. Mystery surrounds the Picts since they left no written record, only symbols carved in metal work or stone, like the Shandwick Stone which has both sides carved. On one side is a large worn cross, formed by spirals, while the opposite side has six panels depicting a hunting scene.
Our next stop was a historic museum in nearby Portmahomack, in an ancient church on the site of the only Pictish monastic settlement excavated to date in Scotland. The museum also has a collection of original stone fragments carved by the Pict people. Later, during our visit to Scotland, we visited another group of mysterious stones in the Orkney Islands — the Ring of Brodgar, believed to be older than Stonehenge. The Orkney Islands’ ring of stones was built around 2500-2000 BC and is the third largest stone circle in the British Isles.
Edinburgh
Scotland’s capital since the 15th century, Edinburgh is mostly famous for its medieval Edinburgh Castle, built in 1102 on a rocky hill in the city’s Old Town, today a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This is where visitors can view the Scottish crown jewels and other medieval treasures. The castle lies at one end of The Royal Mile, while at the other end is the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the official residence in Scotland for His Majesty King Charles. The included Viking tour of Edinburgh provided a bus tour of both Old Town and the Georgian New Town. We also had time to explore the Royal Mile and visited Holyroodhouse, which is open to the public when The King is not in residence. A highlight was climbing the spiral staircase to the rooms where Mary, Queen of Scots, lived and still has the atmosphere of those turbulent times. Blood is evident on the wooden floors of her private apartments after her secretary David Rizzio was murdered there in 1566. It was a fascinating palace tour, especially knowing the palace has been the site of so many events that changed the course of history.
Last week: Exploring myths and legends in Northern Ireland, Wales and Ireland
Next week: Leaving Scotland for Northern Ireland, Ireland and Wales
Kim Pemberton was hosted by Viking Cruises, which did not review or approve this article. Follow her on Instagram at kimstravelogue.
